


Nash Equilibrium

by dicks



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: 8059, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dicks/pseuds/dicks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If life were a game, he'd intend to win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nash Equilibrium

**Author's Note:**

> a companion fic to Meet Me Halfway by pectus_pectoris @ livejournal
> 
> Warning: Minor character's death and overused of metaphors

The café smells of pastries. The paint on the wall isn’t green anymore, almost in burnt-yellowish color, like the nicotine stained on your fingers. You tap your finger slowly on the table, steadfast beats against the glass top, thinking about the irony, thinking about how life resembles a washed-out paint, thinking one would not notice as it slowly decays, consuming from the inside before it withers by time, analytical as you may and perhaps you’re being a little distraught, but your father is dead and you think you at least have the fucking right to be as fucking sentimental as you want.

You feel him staring at you and you don’t even have to turn around. Yamamoto smells like summer heat and fresh-cut grass. Sometimes he smells like a wet puppy but today his smell doesn’t fit the room.

The cigarette is burning itself out and you light a fresh stick. Start all over again.

“You couldn’t have known, Gokudera,” his voice bounces against the wall and falls flat on the floor. There’s a tremor in his words.

“Don’t talk about that,” almost a snap, because you don’t have the energy to do it properly,   that's enough to shut him up. Ten years ago you’d be basking in childish glory but you don’t because you both are no longer the same awkward teenagers, because nothing remains the way it is, because things changed one way or another (the inevitable is inevitable). The coffee is getting cold and you watch the table collecting ashes. The ashtray is too small, the table is too small, the goddamn café is too small and you feel constricted because his eyes are still hard on you.

The thing about Yamamoto is he thinks he has you all figured out; as if he knows you better than anyone else, as if he has you in Prussian blue, spread out like a fucking blueprint in front of him, as if it’s his responsibility to make you less of a hostile person. As if you’re sad.

But you aren’t sad, fuck no, instead you feel angry, enraged and bitter, and you feel like breaking something that already broken into small allegorical pieces. Three fucking years; you think maybe you didn’t try hard enough, or maybe you tried too hard but being a son is something you aren’t used to, or at least forgotten how to and you aren’t good at tolerating people who _aren’t_ Tsuna. Though you forgave your father, buried the hatred once you reserved especially for him, you never forget, you never did because in your book loyalty comes first before everything and apart from Vongola, you’d like to think you are loyal to your mother’s ghost.

So you never called you father, rarely visited him, and left all the unopened tokens and gifts from him in a dark, abandoned corner of your closet.

And now your father is dead, and you lost him for the second time in your life. The first time it happened you feel betrayed, alone and incredibly young and this time you still feel the betrayal but it feels more like compensation (for the things you did, for the things you never did) and you tell yourself it wasn’t about you. It wasn’t about you that people close to you decided to just fucking _die_.

And you didn’t cry even once. You think you probably too fucked up and too _scattered_ to even begin to comprehend this sort of something-resembles-guilt you feel inside, so you sum up all of your feelings into one big gigantic metaphoric ball and chuck it into one side.

But the way Yamamoto looks at you from across the table make you feel paper-thin than you already are. You put out the cigarette, grab the phone and the pack of Dunhill and dump your untouched coffee in the trash can.

“Let’s go,” you say but you don’t miss the dejected expression on his face.

-

The funeral takes place the following week.

Bianchi is sobbing gently on your shoulder, a warm-damp patch on your expensive suit, you think briefly for an insane moment about the stain she’ll leave on your jacket.

You think about dry cleaning as the earth slowly swallows the casket. It is in dark brown, hand-polished mahogany; only the best kind.  A cry is ripped from Bianchi, and she jerks away as if she wants to be consumed together with the casket. You grab her by the wrist, uncharacteristically bony you think, because it’s been a while since you held her, (since you held anyone) and you press her against your chest, muffling her sobs as she shakes, trembles and clutches you too tightly, you think she could meld into you. 

You don’t know what to do with your hands. You never quite know what to do with your hands when you aren’t using them for smoking or holding dynamites or killing in the name of protecting so you pat her back, somewhat awkward, moving slow in small circles and your body vibrates against hers.

You raise your eyes and find yourself staring into Yamamoto’s brown ones. He tilts his head to the side and gives you a small, sad smile and you quickly turn away, blinking.

You convince yourself you aren’t crying. The goddamn smoke gets in your eyes.

-

You stagger into the bathroom and switch on the light. There’s a faint bite mark visible on the base of your neck and you aren’t sure how it even got there but lately you aren’t sure about so many things. The last few weeks have been nothing but a series of fuck ups, strings of charades and day by day fuzzy-crepuscular memories to you.

Tsuna is seemingly oblivious and you are grateful for that. Tsuna never gets to see you at your worst. You devoted yourself to your work more than you usually do and when you did not, there were always people, nameless people, quick fuck at some dark corner, hard edges and rough, something stray and temporary to keep you occupied. Something to keep you from being empty.

You peel off your shirt and there’s another teeth mark on your abdomen, a baby caterpillar underneath your skin. It was probably the same guy Yamamoto caught you were with your tongue in his mouth and your hand in his pants earlier. You don’t even remember his name. You don’t fucking care. But you wonder if Yamamoto ever does.

-

You aren’t sure how you ended up here.

You aren’t sure where exactly is ‘here’ until you sense the familiar-warmth that is surrounding you slowly dissipating. You blink to the image of Yamamoto looking down at you. You blink again to the image of Yamamoto moving away from you, “Stay with me.” You say. “’S all right, stay,” because you’re getting comfortable, because everything that happened seems so far away.

He smiles at you like he can see right through you and you mirror him but your lips twitch into a-not-smile, tight and wavering, like a stretch of string, like, _Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings (1)_—, and you hum Albinoni's Adagio under your breath.

Yamamoto sits by your side and you stop humming, slightly disjointed and wandering and something you don’t quite understand yourself. You are back at being seven with your head on your father’s lap watching Le Procès for the umpteenth time because it was his favorite and that was the last happy memory you had of him. 

(but you never forget)

“You know—if my father saw me like this just about now— he’d be mortified.” Because it is true and Yamamoto helps you with your jacket and snicker to yourself, mutter, “He’d be so fucking ashamed.”

“Gokudera.”

“I know, I know—I know what you’re going to say. ‘He can’t see you, Gokudera.’” You snort. You feel random. Your mind keep straying backwards and suddenly there is so much to say, “I know he can’t see me—he can’t—he’s—” but rationale escapes through your fingers, you inhale, exhale and you lost your words.

“There was something I wanted to tell him,” you say, finally. “Something very important, something—” and knock the heel of your palm on your forehead, drifting. “But now I just can’t remember what it was.”

And here, his hand brushing your hand away, like he has the fucking right to, but you probably lean to the touch (but only to formulate the algebraic structure of human contact, you tell yourself).

“Sleep now, Gokudera,” he says, stroking your forehead with his thumb, callous and clammy-warm and heartbeats, “Get some sleep.”

But you don’t want to sleep. You suddenly feel the desperate need to stay awake. Like the desperation on Yamamoto’s face. Like he’s struggling inside. Like a smile that never quite reaching the eyes (like it hurts). And you feel as though you are in a part of some kind of bizarre tragicomedy, _On horror's head horrors accumulate (2)_—

“When did it happen?” you press the corner of his mouth with your finger, “I didn’t even notice.”

He smiles his oxymoronic smile and faltering and you ask again, “When?”

“When what, Gokudera?”

“When did you stop smiling?”

He blinks at you, not understanding. You are compelled to shake the life out of him but instead you reach for him, palming his cheeks and he gasps softly under your touch. “Why did you stop smiling, baseball idiot? Was it because of me? Did I chase your smile away?”

“No— no, Gokudera, you could never—you’re the one who stopped smiling.”

-

If life were a game, you’d intend to win.

In reality, you are such a sore loser. This would be the game you play, you created with your own epileptic hands— life was. Until.

Yamamoto bounced into your field of vision, uninvited, unintended, never part of the plan. The advantage was you are familiar with your strategy, you stick to your game plan (you know it by heart); in zero-sum game somebody’s got to lose. Flat out. But Yamamoto, a permeating image of a fool, seemingly a better player than you first thought. “Gokudera. What do you think this means to me?” he would smile when his eyes would not. You both were on your bed, clothes strewn all over the carpetless floor. Next door was like a whole different universe with the television blaring, you could hear deodorant commercial— _Smell Like a Man, Man,_ through the cardboard-thin wall. You brushed him off, said that it meant nothing, said it’s not going to happen and fucked him down the mattress.

But the truth is you’re in a deepshit, brimming towards defeat; subtract 20 points when your mother fell off the cliff, 10 points when you were slaving yourself on the street just to find a place to _belong_ , another 10 points for being fucked up, add 50 points when you met Tsuna, and then you found yourself overthrown by an idiotic smile, outmaneuvered even in optimal equilibria; a mere knight eating your king and queen.  

-

“Shit.” Is the first thing you say.

You wake up to Yamamoto still sleeping beside you. Your throat is parch, head pounding, chest tightening, you feel raw and alienated; you want to close your eyes, burying your head under the covers (like you used to when you were six) _five minutes, only_ _five minutes more please_ — but instead you take a deep breath, running numbers from ten to one and backwards in your head and stumble in the middle because skin, fingers, thighs, lips, _kiss me_ — Yamamoto, everything scampers through your brain at once. You then throw the covers aside and sit with your back to him, brooding over your throbbing head.

But then there are things like a touch on the elbow, body heat, Yamamoto being too fucking close; you stiffen and snarl, “What are you doing? Why are you even here, Yamamoto? Look, I don’t need—“

“I know you don’t need my pity or sympathy,” he says, smiling brighter than the morning sun. “I know that very well. I’m just here to—” he crawls across the bed and place a kiss on your bare shoulder. “I’m just here to be with you.”

And things like the way he looks at you, half-asleep, bed-headed and wanting. Things like non-too-subtle noises, startled breath and placebo laughs, like the way he scratches the back of his neck when he feels awkward.

You groan, clutching your head and say, “As if it wasn’t enough that I have this mother of a hangover, you had to go and bang me like a screen door in a hurricane. Shit.”

Yamamoto bursts out laughing.

-

 

(1) Excerpt from A Clockwork Orange

(2) Othello, 3. 3


End file.
